Sunday, 23 April 2017

Strawberry Picking

/ Sunny Ridge Strawberry Farm

My Nana always used to sprinkle sugar on a bowl of strawberries. It was her dessert specialty. A snack that if you're good enough at self-deception, you can claim to be healthy. I eventually got into the habit of only eating strawberries doused in sucrose or sitting snug next to a heap of ice cream. If only I'd visited a strawberry farm sooner. Fresh off the vine, these strawbs taste better than any sugary-smothered diabetes-provoking dessert I have ever conjured. Sorry Nan.

Picking the perfect strawberry requires a critical eye, a firm tug and a nod of approval from friends that you drag along to take aesthetically pleasing photos with. Maybe it's just the placebo effect of foraging for the fruits that makes them so damn delish. Either way, I'm sitting here making my way through my custom punnet at lightning speed.

We trekked to Sunny Ridge Strawberry Farm in Red Hill. This is how it works: pay $9 upon arrival and you get handed an empty plastic container and a sexy pair of blue Grey's Anatomy-scrub-esque shoe covers in return. A great deal. Then you head home. If you're not content with this exchange, you then walk down to where the real magic happens. The strawberry fields.

There are lanes upon lanes of ready-to-pick strawbs, and also a whole lotta mud, if like us, you visit after a recent downpour. This makes everything quite a slippery but highly entertaining endeavour. You then start plucking at your own pace, being sure to throw your eaten strawbs at aforementioned friends. We were so lucky to have such an incredibly sun-soaked afternoon to set ourselves upon such a picturesque backdrop.

Sunny Ridge has the most adorable cafe and dessert bar to park your tired strawberry-picking tush. We sat ourselves down and went absolutely in on some incredible wild berry sorbets. To die for. There was so much more on offer: hard lollies, cakes, jams and confitures, merchandise. Basically if you have a fondness for this particular red fruit, you're in for a treat. If I stayed there for a moment longer I think I might have just spontaneously turned into a strawberry.